Special offers and product promotions

Buy Used and Save:
Buy a Used "Pioneer VSX-1021-K 7.1 Home Theater Receiver, Glos..." and save 54% off the $549.00 list price. Buy with confidence as the condition of this item and its timely delivery are guaranteed under the "Amazon A-to-z Guarantee".
See all Used offers.

Top customer reviews

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

I've owned this receiver since early 2012 and bought it new from Costco. For the cost, it's a good receiver, and I haven't encountered some of the problems that others have encountered. However, the sound hasn't ever been as clear has I've wanted, and I've spent a lot of time tweaking it. I now just bounce between the built-in presets to find what works best for the given input. The one thing I've hated about this unit is the volume on the remote control. All of the other buttons work fine, but the pressure-sensitive buttons rarely register, when they do, there's a long delay before the volume changes. Then when it "catches", it rockets too high or too low. And you have to be perfecting still and in front of it. I hate this implementation so much that I find myself getting up and using the dial 90% of the time to avoid the frustration.

This Pioneer unit is a major disappointment! I've owned it for almost 5 years now. It's in our home theater and is connected to a Ben-Q overhead projector and a 7.1 set of Onkyo surround sound speakers. We have the video from our XBox One going into the receiver and out the HDMI port to the projector. The video on the screen is amazing and the sound through the speakers is fantastic. The receiver can handle both of them without an issue. My problem with this receiver is that it's flashing the "VE33" code constantly which means there is something wrong with the system board inside. We use this receiver at most a few hours a day during the winter. During the summer it gets very little use. I realize this isn't a top of the line receiver at around $350, but with as little use as it gets it should have lasted at least 10 years. We also have a Pioneer VSX-9500S that we've owned since around 1990 that is still going strong after 27 years! This newer stuff is really cheaply made if it can't last more than 5 years. So disappointing!

The VSX-1021 k is a great receiver. I found that it was very easy to set up. I ran a Ethernet cable from the back into my router , hooked up the speakers, ran some HDMI cables into the VSX-1021 from the PS3, cable box ,and ran one out from the VSX-1021 to the TV before finally plugging in the receiver and turning it on.

The remote control software is great and it is called icontrolAV2 which loads up on your Android based phone. It controls volume, selects inputs, turns the receiver off and on if in network standby mode, selects internet radio stations and has all kind of audiophile functions for precision tuning as well. There is a version of this software app available for the iPad and iphone as well. I have used the iPad version and the Android version is much more intuitive imho. There is also another app which comes on a cd for your computer or downloads from iTunes for your iPad/iPhone its called AVNavigator which is little more than an interactive manual and can be skipped by most users. I say this because if you can understand the manual you won't need this 2nd program and if you cant understand the manual then you won't understand AVNavigator either since its basically the same thing.

The DLNA 1.5 implementation is a disaster from the receiver and a joy to use from the PC. You must go into windows media player into library-'media sharing'check the box that says share my media-' then select VSX-1021 from the devices want to allow. If windows happens to see your network as public you have to go into networking and switch it to private for any of this to work. The only good thing is you only have to do all this one time.

After getting the PC setup to share you only have to go to the receiver and switch it over to D.M.G. you then get a OSD where you can browse your music and play your .FLAC, WMA and MP3 files with reckless abandon. The only problem here is the OSD looks like some kind of old school Etch and Sketch project from the 70's. I got 20,000 songs on my PC and this ridiculous music browser is displaying every single song title in alphabetical order with no regard to album or artist. Pioneers software implementation to browse pc's for music is just a bust.

However, if you use a third part application to push the tunes from the PC to the VSX-1021 everything works great. I use airfoil to push music out to the receiver and its way more versatile than airplay for the PC users like myself. I have tested this with such software players as Songbird, Verizon Media Manager, MusicBee and MediaMonkey. I must say that the playback from MediaMonkey is far superior than the others. I had never noticed a difference when playing from the PC speakers, but when pushing out to the VSX-1021 it exposes a lot of differences in the sound output of these software music players.

Airplay worked great right out of the box. My roommate and I both had iTunes pushing songs to the receiver from each of our windows laptops immediately. I grabbed my iPad and had no trouble streaming Sirrus XM radio and Pandora from the iPad to the receiver using airplay. The way you do this is by double tapping the home button on the iPad while using the airplay compatible application. This opens up an application tray. Drag it over to the right to reveal a set of controls, you will then see the usual airplay icon just like it shows up in iTunes where you can select either the VSX-1021 or iPad as the active speakers.

Now as far as the sound quality of this receiver, I must say it is fantastic. The power draw on this receiver is 550 watts which way up from the previous generation of pioneer receiver. It says 90 watts per channel and is having no trouble driving my Def Tech BP-8060ST's with ease. I am very happy with my music listening experience with the VSX-1021 receiver. I have played Mortal Kombat vs DC and Madden 2012 on the PS3 and the sound is great. I have the sound set on auto detect and it does a good job of switching between games, movies and music all on its own. Only movie I have watched so far is the "Clash of the Titans 3D" on Blue Ray and I was quite pleased with the sound effects and visual quality.

I highly recommend this receiver for someone like myself who is looking for a great all around entry level receiver for all your entertainment needs. It is very nice to buy something these days and actually get your money's worth!

EDIT to add. I bought a second VSX 1021K from Amazon, along with some great speakers and a great cabinet. Great A/V receiver that with some time becomes more and more easy to use and understand. This unit has great sound on music, Blu-Rays, streaming video, and HD cable. The second one is used in conjunction with a 60" LG Plasma, Polk CS10 center, Polk Monitor 50 fronts, Polk R150 backs, and a Bic America F12 450 watt front firing sub. All in I'm well under 3K for this set up and couldn't be happier. Sound options on the VSX1021K are plentiful and the seperation is perfect. I have not used the included mic for auto leveling as of yet. Not sure if I'll even try it, as regular settings are great for my use. I'm not an audiphile, but this setup sounds perfect to me. Thanks Amazon, great service, as usual.

I've had this VSX-1021-K for a few weeks plus. I love the sleek look, all the inputs, and all the features on this A/V receiver. That being said, this old timer, (that's me)is having a tough time making sense out of everything. I have a turntable that I would like to use with this setup. I bought a converter or preamp, (whatever i was told to buy) and hooked it up. I still can't get any sound from my turntable. I also tried an old CD player, plugged into the "CD" RCA jacks and have no sound. It might just be the CD player, so I can't complain. You see, this is my first new age A/V receiver. I did get the HD cable box connected via HDMI and back to the TV 50" LG Plasma (I love this TV) and the picture is great. The sound quality from this receiver is outstanding. I run it to 2 JBL ND310 fronts, an older Polk center, and 2 Polk backs, along with the BIC F-12 subwoofer. The sound is killer good. This setup is run in my office/mancave (no offense ladies, you have Women's Workout World, we have mancave's) All in all, I love this Pioneer Receiver. It'll be even better when I figure out how to use the rest of the features. Until then, I'm a happy camper. Amazon service was top shelf (as usual)and the price was great too. Once I get more into the meat of this rig, I'll be back with more comments. Thanks for reading and feel free to respond.